The market for bitcoin futures is heating up

Ed Tilly, CEO of the exchange group, told Business
Insider volumes and the number of participants in the market
are picking up.

The market for bitcoin futures is heating up.

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With much fanfare, Cboe Global Markets'
bitcoin futures contracts started trading Sunday. The new
market, which allows investors to bet on the future price of
bitcoin, sent the digital currency up by more than $1,000 within
the first ten minutes of its launch. And interest in the new
market triggered a crash of Cboe's website.

Still, volumes were relatively low with only 800 contracts traded
within the first two hours, according to Cboe. On the whole, the
order book was thin with only a handful of participants trading
in the new market.

But Cboe CEO Ed Tilly told Business Insider in an interview
Monday morning that the market is picking up. For starters,
volumes have more than tippled to 3,350, according to Bloomberg
data. More participants are entering the market as well,
according to Tilly.

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"I am pretty pleased," Tilly said of the new market launch. "We
started with about 12 participants in the market, some of them
are trading for customers. That's up to 22 this morning."

Tilly said that number will build over the coming days and weeks
as trading firms and brokers waiting on the sidelines see the
order book fill up.

"I talked to one this morning who wants to wait and see and then
make their decision mid-week," Tilly said of one brokerage firm
considering clearing the new products for customers."They didn't
raise a concern about the market."

TD Ameritrade
is one such firm taking a "wait and see" approach. JB
Mackenzie, a managing director on the brokerage's futures and
forex trading team, said in an interview with Business Insider on
Thursday that the firm is waiting for the right amount of
liquidity in the market before it jumps in.

Mackenzie couldn't be reached at the time of publication for an
update.

As for the future of the cryptocurrency world, Tilly said a
futures market for bitcoin could pave the way for the listing of
the first exchange traded fund linked to bitcoin. That could
bring a lot more money from retail investors into the burgeoning
market for bitcoin.

Van Eck and REX Shares proposed such a product in a filing with
the Securities and Exchange Commission Monday.

The US regulator rejected an earlier attempt by Bats Global
Markets, which was acquired by Cboe earlier this year, to list a
bitcoin exchange-traded fund with Gemini, the cryptocurrency
exchange.

"It's going to take time," Tilly said. "The mandate of the SEC is
consumer protection so they are going to be diligent."